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[StupidElves]

So, after a quick look on Wikipedia, Europe had flintlocks by the 1400's. Crude, yes. But still had them.

Asia had hand cannons by then. So, hand cannons and flintlocks?

More specifically, with the new tech forest, could civs find out about various firearms and the like? And could that also be how humans learn how to make steel on their own?

[Dirst]

I'm sure this has been discussed repeatedly, but I seem to have missed those conversations.  I don't think hand cannon or flintlocks really fit in with vanilla DF, though it'd be nice if the projectile mechanics could accommodate them for modding.

What might fit, however, are cannon as costly siege engines (particularly when those become mobile).  The earliest proto-cannon were wooden, but picking up at the bronze ones that actually lasted a while sounds more reasonable.  Curiously, the bronze ones wore out faster than the iron ones, but the iron ones were more likely to have catastrophic failures without warning.

The can of worms that cannon open up is the general existence of explosives.  Logically the player should be able to rig barrel-sized bombs and other tricks getting pretty far afield from DF lore.  Historically just storing gunpowder was hazardous.  Just fixing the hinge on a door at a magazine was a stressful and time-consuming process that used specialized tools to avoid producing any sparks.

Off-hand, I'm not sure how many magazines blew up before they figured out the need to be so careful with hand tools.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Some related reading:

Capntastic:   The next thing; explosives. What are your plans for tactical nukes?
Toady:   That's right, we have unrefined uranium in the game, and I hear about centrifuges all the time, and aluminum tubes ... We've got aluminum, we don't have centrigues, we have pipe sections, so you make a giant aluminum pipe section and fill it with pitchblende or whatever we've got and ... Yeah, so we're not doing that. But the kind of thing that's on the table is gunpowder, and the materials that you need for that are already in the game, I think. We've got brimstone, which is sulphur, and I don't remember if we have saltpetre, if it's there or not, but ... I guess you could do all kinds of things with manure and urine to make it, or you can find it in a crystalline form in the ground perhaps. And we've got charcoal and coal and kinds of stuff like that available, so it's there, the building blocks are there, and then it become strictly a matter of taste, and what you're going to do with it. I don't think we've had the discussion on Dwarf Fortress Talk before but I've had the discussion on the forums or in the dev notes and so on about what we think about that. Where we were on that is that we are not against coding up the code necessary to get that kind of thing to work; at the very least just blowing the crap out of things. Maybe not making a gun or something but blowing the crap out of things. That probably wouldn't be in the most vanilla vanilla Dwarf Fortress. After we see it action and see it perhaps not spoiling the mood entirely it might make it in, but certainly we'd support that kind of thing shortly after chemistry starts to take off; I've no problem with that at all. Then it's a matter of how blowing stuff up works in the game. It would just be another one of those reactions; when this point hits its ignition point it's a little different than just setting on fire. It would just need to be able to look around at the adjacent squares and apply forces to things, and it can do all that. It should be not that difficult once we have the chemistry stuff we've been talking about to have things that are explosive, and not just black powder which as far as I know is the only historical example of a real explosive. Of course people can show me whatever else there is that I don't know about there, but there can also be fantasy-type explosive things, like creatures that blow up for no reason that somehow survived after all these thousands of years, and then when you come up to them they just blow up.
Rainseeker:   It's because they're allergic to dwarves.
Toady:   Well, dwarf is a ...
Capntastic:   One dies so that the others may live.
Toady:   Yeah, unless they're all lined up or something, because those things tend to blow up in clusters. I'm not really sure where I'm at right now ... pro modded explosives and kind of ambivalent about vanilla explosives. It should be the kind of thing that is just one extra step in the chemistry raws; instead of saying that this thing heats up when the products are mixed or the products are ignited, it's like 'this does an explosion of this force per unit of black powder'; then there'd just need to be one extra function there that says what an explosion does. After that you can start to work with ideas; like what about things like cannons or mines that you want to do, and we can slowly work with that but the farther afield you go the more it would be deprioritised.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

I don't want DF to featue guns by default, but considering that firearms are basically more powerful crossbows that use up gunpowder with bullets in place of bolts, they aren't that hard to mod in anyway. On the subject of that quote, I do kind of hope that Toady ends up adding a bit of nuclear physics to DF, to allow for stuff like the natural reactor in Gabon.

[BoredVirulence]

I've seen this discussion before, and I believe the general tone is, a small percentage believe it should be vanilla, a small percentage believe it shouldn't be supported by Toady, the majority don't want it in vanilla but think its acceptable or desirable to add support for it.

Sure black powder rifles can be modded in by just modifying crossbows. If you want a cloud emitted after firing you'll have to use dfhack. It won't affect line of sight, it won't have thought modifiers, and does nothing useful. You also can't do explosions. No, alcohol doesn't explode, it harmlessly boils (I've tested it, in dismay). If you want any sort of explosive effect, its going to be through dfhack, and it won't be ideal. That's the kind of support I'd like to see, but I don't foresee it anytime soon.

[AceSV]

Some related reading:
....

So it sounds like the suggestion we should be making is not to add gunpowder, but to add explosions.  As long as the the game has explosions under the hood and tools to create them, it's trivial to add the reaction for gunpowder and gunpowder devices.  The interesting thing is that the more obvious way to create explosions with Dwarf technology is weapons-grade ethanol (booze). 

There are 3 types of useful explosions that I can think of,

Concussive - Emits a damaging shockwave but no heat, i.e. compressed air or dynamite.  (you get to see a lot of these on MythBusters) 
Incendiary - Catches everything nearby on fire, i.e.a gasoline or ethanol explosion. 
Shrapnel - The damage from the pressure wave is minimal, but pieces of shrapnel are propelled to smash or cut, i.e. a grenade or grapeshot.  This is also essentially how a gun works, but there's only one piece of shrapnel and only one direction it can go. 

So in other words, damage with the explosion's pressure wave, set things on fire with the explosion or knock dangerous objects around with an explosion. 



It would be interesting to have concussive explosions damage the area around them.  Not just buildings and dwarves, but destroy walls and leave craters in the soil, potentially causing cave-ins.  It would be like digging, but all at once. 

Also, if explosions work the way Toady explains, there's a center of force and everything around it is pushed away, you could just make cannons but digging out tubes, filling one end with explosives and putting a lead bar stockpile inside it. 



I also want to point out that while guns are pushing the edge of the technology limit, rockets are 1000s of years old and could be used for all kinds of dwarfy endeavors. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons

[StupidElves]

Well, the idea was that gunpowder and flintlocks and the like to be a result of the tech forest, with it being extremely unlikely that any civ would get it unless they were really lucky. Making it to where you could see a civ late in world gen start dominating due to the creation of such weapons. That could make them a valuable trade partner and the like.

[hatesdigimon]

Well, the idea was that gunpowder and flintlocks and the like to be a result of the tech forest, with it being extremely unlikely that any civ would get it unless they were really lucky. Making it to where you could see a civ late in world gen start dominating due to the creation of such weapons. That could make them a valuable trade partner and the like.

once DF adds tech being usable this needs to be a thing. you could try to advance your civilization through brute force/diplomacy in adventure mode. But why not learn? or steal blueprints/be an epic spy. It adds depth to the game. +1

[vjmdhzgr]

Well, the idea was that gunpowder and flintlocks and the like to be a result of the tech forest, with it being extremely unlikely that any civ would get it unless they were really lucky. Making it to where you could see a civ late in world gen start dominating due to the creation of such weapons. That could make them a valuable trade partner and the like.

once DF adds tech being usable this needs to be a thing. you could try to advance your civilization through brute force/diplomacy in adventure mode. But why not learn? or steal blueprints/be an epic spy. It adds depth to the game. +1

Once something like this gets added then we're going to need to make it possible for civilizations to keep secrets. As it is it seems that even random humans can go to a dark fortress and learn whatever they want. High level things like firearms should definitely be kept secret, as well as other things like steel if it was added as something civs could research.

[Dirst]

Once something like this gets added then we're going to need to make it possible for civilizations to keep secrets. As it is it seems that even random humans can go to a dark fortress and learn whatever they want. High level things like firearms should definitely be kept secret, as well as other things like steel if it was added as something civs could research.

Dwarven smiths are incredibly proud of their metalcraft, and can be just about the chattiest dwarves you'll ever meet in a tavern.  This could be a serious problem for containing the secrets of steel.

Fortunately, "chatty" for a dwarf means occasionally grunting between drinks.

[utunnels]

Judging from current battle system, I don't think gun and cannon can be much more deadly than minecarts...aiming, turning, and AI stuff, they all need to be altered to balance those new additions.

But really, fix siege machines first. They haven't been updated since the 2D version.


Edit*

Oh, you are talking about hand-held weapons.

[StupidElves]

Judging from current battle system, I don't think gun and cannon can be much more deadly than minecarts...aiming, turning, and AI stuff, they all need to be altered to balance those new additions.

But really, fix siege machines first. They haven't been updated since the 2D version.


Edit*

Oh, you are talking about hand-held weapons.

I actually wasn't thinking about siege cannons. If they were to be added, then the already in the game siege weapons need to be reworked.

Which after rereading is what you were saying. But, yeah. This is just a simple idea on how to include firearms without actually including them as something everyone has access to.

[healhound]

Can't comment anything new on the topic, but I suddenly realised that explosives = EXACTLY what the in-game Fun has been missing so far.

[BoredVirulence]

Can't comment anything new on the topic, but I suddenly realised that explosives = EXACTLY what the in-game Fun has been missing so far.

It really is, my experiments with igniting barrels of booze were less deadly than anticipated, and hugely disappointing.